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Ice Age
An ice age is a period in which the earth's climate is colder than normal, with ice sheets capping the poles and glaciers dominating higher altitudes. Within an ice age, there are varying pulses of colder and warmer climatic conditions, known...
Article
Stone Age Tools
As the Stone Age covers around 99% of our human technological history, it would seem there is a lot to talk about when looking at the development of tools in this period. Despite our reliance on the sometimes scarce archaeological record...
Definition
Stone Age
From the dawn of our species to the present day, stone-made artefacts are the dominant form of material remains that have survived to today concerning human technology. The term “Stone Age” was coined in the late 19th century...
Definition
Paleolithic
The Palaeolithic ('Old Stone Age') makes up the earliest chunk of the Stone Age – the large swathe of time during which hominins used stone to make tools – and ranges from the first known tool use roughly 2,6 million years ago...
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Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherer Societies
Hunter-gatherer societies are – true to their astoundingly descriptive name – cultures in which human beings obtain their food by hunting, fishing, scavenging, and gathering wild plants and other edibles. Although there are still...
Definition
Neanderthal
Neanderthals are an extinct group of fossil humans that appeared in Western Eurasia in the mid-Middle Pleistocene and shared the stage with the first modern humans arriving in Europe from around 45,000 years ago, before disappearing from...
Definition
Venus Figurine
The term Venus figurine is used to describe the more than 200 small statuettes of voluptuous female figures that have been found at Upper Paleolithic sites across Europe and some parts of Asia. “When paleoanthropologists refer to figurines...
Definition
Greek Dark Age
The Greek Dark Age (c. 1200 to c. 800 BCE, overlapping with the Iron Age, c. 1200-550 BCE) is the modern-day term for the period in Greek history following the Bronze Age Collapse when the Mycenaean Civilization fell and the Linear B writing...
Definition
Homo Heidelbergensis
Homo heidelbergensis is an extinct species of human that is identified in both Africa and western Eurasia from roughly 700,000 years ago onwards until around 200,000 years ago – fitting snugly within the Middle Pleistocene. Named for...
Definition
Homo Floresiensis
Homo floresiensis, nicknamed 'hobbit' because it only stood about 1 meter tall, is an extinct species of fossil human that lived on the island of Flores, Indonesia during the Pleistocene. Floresiensis is still shrouded in a fair bit of mystery...